How to use Focused Inbox in Outlook

In Outlook, Focused Inbox is a feature that uses machine learning to control the overflow of emails by analyzing incoming messages and placing the most important emails in the "Focused" tab, while the rest go to the "Other" tab.

The feature is available for all Outlook.com, Live.com, Hotmail.com, and Exchange users through the web portal, using the desktop version of Outlook included with Office, or using the default Mail app available with Windows 10.

In this Windows 10 guide, we walk you through the steps to get started and manage the Focused Inbox feature included in the Outlook app or on the web.

Once you complete these steps, Focused Inbox will no longer be available in your account, and all your messages will appear without any smart sorting.

How to use Focused Inbox in Outlook

Although the instructions to set up Focused Inbox are slightly different depending on your experience of Outlook, the feature works virtually the same on every environment.

Once the feature is enabled, you'll notice two new tabs in the Inbox section, including the "Focused" and "Other".

The Focused tab includes the emails that Outlook understands are the most important to you using machine learning. The emails that you'll find in this tab will consist of those emails from work, contacts, people you interact frequently, and other emails that the feature detects as important.

On the other hand, the Other tab includes the less important emails, such as newsletters, advertisements, automatically generated messages, and bulk emails.

While this feature to sort messages is convenient, it's not a perfect system, and you have to train it to improve its accuracy. For example, if new emails arrive and they're sorted incorrectly, in the Focused tab you can right-click the message and select one of the two options:

Move to Other — Relocates the email to the Other tab, but future emails from the same sender may continue to arrive in the Focused tab.

Always Move to Other — Moves the messages to the Other tab, and future messages will appear in the Other tab.

In the same way, while in the Other tab, you can select the Moved to Focused option when you only want to move one email. Or you can select the Always Move to Focused option if you want future emails from the same address to be available through the Focused tab.

If you're using the web version of Outlook, you need to right-click the email and select the Move submenu to find the options.

Also, because it can be easy to forget to check the Other tab, the Focused tab will show you a message at the top of the column informing you of the emails that have been sorted as less important.

We're focusing this guide on users who access their emails with a Windows 10 device, but Focused Inbox is also available for the mobile version of Outlook for Android and iOS, and it's available for the macOS version of Outlook, as well.

More Windows 10 resources

For more helpful articles, coverage, and answers to common questions about Windows 10, visit the following resources: